In 2014, transnationally-educated Chinese nationals began running short-term development-themed educational and volunteer programs to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. Designed for a middle-class demographic born in the 1990s and 2000s, referred to as jiulinghou 九零后 and linglinghou 零零后, the trips marked a turn from the predominance of extracurricular Chinese travel to Western nation-states that provided “international experience” – a valuable form of cultural capital – to young adults. The following year, China’s President Xi Jinping designated Kenya as one of three African countries targeted as maritime nodes within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an enormous project of infrastructural and commercial development meant to provide a global network for Chinese expansion and influence. During this period, Kenyan nationals harbored suspicion toward China over market interference and debts from BRI mega-infrastructure projects, viewing Chinese nationals as extractive, isolationist, and unphilanthropic. Yet, Kenyan community schools and development organizations – traditionally funded by wealthy Western donors and organizations – agreed to host Chinese programs.
My dissertation elucidates how Kenya unexpectedly became a niche destination for China’s middle-class youth during a critical and fraught moment in Chinese geopolitical expansion and asks: What global conjunctures galvanized Chinese nationals to identify Kenya as a destination for young people? What material and conceptual transformations have these programs generated for both Chinese and Kenyan nationals?
Critically, my findings problematize the understanding of Chinese practices as exceptional on the African continent. Remediating a scholarly focus on Africa-China relationships as exceptional, I instead argue for a constellational approach that takes seriously Kenyan and Chinese nationals’ substantive entanglements with Western institutions and geographies. Crucially, I argue that Chinese youth programming in Kenya galvanized both Chinese and Kenyan actors to create emergent imaginaries of geopolitical hierarchies, in turn informing the way Chinese and Kenyan nationals approached one another. Specifically, I argue that Kenyan actors re-imagined Chinese actors as benevolent, morally good “superpowers” on the world stage, while Chinese programs re-interpreted Kenya as a “safe” destination with “international” features, yet in need of development intervention.
My dissertation contributes to anthropological research on transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, personhood in contemporary China, ideologies and practices of development within Kenya, media and social imaginaries, and Kenya-China relations.
My dissertation elucidates how Kenya unexpectedly became a niche destination for China’s middle-class youth during a critical and fraught moment in Chinese geopolitical expansion and asks: What global conjunctures galvanized Chinese nationals to identify Kenya as a destination for young people? What material and conceptual transformations have these programs generated for both Chinese and Kenyan nationals?
Critically, my findings problematize the understanding of Chinese practices as exceptional on the African continent. Remediating a scholarly focus on Africa-China relationships as exceptional, I instead argue for a constellational approach that takes seriously Kenyan and Chinese nationals’ substantive entanglements with Western institutions and geographies. Crucially, I argue that Chinese youth programming in Kenya galvanized both Chinese and Kenyan actors to create emergent imaginaries of geopolitical hierarchies, in turn informing the way Chinese and Kenyan nationals approached one another. Specifically, I argue that Kenyan actors re-imagined Chinese actors as benevolent, morally good “superpowers” on the world stage, while Chinese programs re-interpreted Kenya as a “safe” destination with “international” features, yet in need of development intervention.
My dissertation contributes to anthropological research on transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, personhood in contemporary China, ideologies and practices of development within Kenya, media and social imaginaries, and Kenya-China relations.
Academic Publications
2019 “Film Review: Lust for Sight.” Visual Anthropology Review 35(1): 112-113.
2018 “Making the Rounds: Ethnographic Film in Circulation” (co-authored with Alia Ayman). Visual
and New Media Review, Society for Cultural Anthropology website, Jan 24.
2017 “Chinese Media, Kenyan Lives: An Ethnographic Inquiry into CCTV Africa’s Head Offices.” Working Paper Series. China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-CARI).
2017 “Revolutionary Friendship: Representing Africa During the Mao Era.” In China-Africa
Relations: Building Images through Cultural Cooperation, Media Representation, and on the Ground Activities (China Policy Series), edited by Kathryn Batchelor and Xiaoling Zhang, pp.29-50. Routledge.
2014 “Accepting/Rejecting: China’s discursive reconfiguration of zoe for a new era in organ
Donation.” In “Special Issue: Except Asia: Agamben’s Work in Transcultural Perspective.” Jon Solomon, ed. Concentric 40 (2): 203-218. [Refereed]
2013 “China’s New Exit-Entry Law: Strike Hard Against Immigration.” China Brief 23:13-15.
Popular Outlets
2017 “The Madaraka Express: a ride on Kenya’s brand new Chinese-built railway.” Cross
published on Roads & Kingdoms, Slate, and CNN Parts Unknown.
2015 “A Little Africa in China.” The Diplomat Magazine. August Issue.
